Foreword

There is an astonishing explosion of interest in recent years in near-field optics, nano-optics, nano-photonics and plasmonics, which appear as emerging optical science branches dealing with evanescent waves confined in a nanometer scale volume. Such waves can be manipulated with a nano-probe located in the optical near field of structures. The optical near field imaging can reach a nano-scale resolution beyond the conventional diffraction limit (Airy disk), so does as well the high-density data storage.

The book 'Subwavelength Optics' is structured with both basic theory and practical applications elucidating from elements/devices design/numerical simulation, micro/nanofabrication to geometrical and optical characterization so that it can be of value to educators teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in multiple disciplines. For them, it will serve as a textbook that illustrates basic principles and multidisciplinary approaches. Most chapters are essentially independent of each other, providing flexibility in choice of topics to be covered. Thus, the book can also readily be adopted for training and tutorial short courses. Both fresh students and engineers/researchers can be benefited from this book. The book, written by a leading practitioner of near-field optics, arrives at an opportune time because there is a substantial body of results available in the field that need to be gathered together in a systematic fashion, although the book can cover only a part of this emerging area, where the new knowledge and new research discoveries come out in explosion.